Three weeks ago, I shared a video about the economics of trade balances.

Here’s the next video in the Freedom Partner series, which looks at why trade (whether inside a nation or across borders) makes our lives better.

Simply stated, we would all be miserably poor if we couldn’t trade.

But when we can exchange with each other, we naturally begin to specialize in what we like and what we do best. Adam Smith referred to this as the “division of labour” and he noted that this enables much greater prosperity.

A related concept is comparative advantage, which is a way of illustrating how we become richer when trade enables us to focus on what we do best compared to others.

Alan Blinder summarized this concept in a column for the Wall Street Journal.

A snarky mathematician once challenged the great Paul Samuelson to name an economic proposition that is true but not obvious. Samuelson’s choice was comparative advantage, which shows, among other things, that there are mutual gains from trade even if one nation is better than another at producing everything. Here’s a homespun illustration. Suppose a surgeon is also a whiz at house painting—better than most professional painters. Should she therefore take time off from her medical practice to paint her own house? Certainly not. For while she may have a slight edge over most painters when it comes to painting walls, she has an enormous edge when it comes to performing surgery. Surgery is her comparative advantage, so she should specialize in it and let some others, who don’t know their way around an operating room, specialize in painting—their comparative advantage. That way, the whole economy becomes more efficient. The same principle applies to nations.

Some of Samuelson’s observations over a lengthy and influential career were not so great, but his analysis about comparative advantage was spot on.

This short clip from Matt Ridley also is a very good description of why we should trade and reap the benefits of comparative advantage.

Last but not least, here’s a video from FEE on why specialization gives us so many great things.

By the way, I cited a couple of studies in my video.

The one showing 2-percent to 5-percent faster growth was published by the International Monetary Fund last November. Here’s part of the abstract.

In the cross section of countries, there is a strong positive correlation between trade and income, and a negative relationship between trade and inequality. Does this reflect a causal relationship? We adopt the Frankel and Romer (1999) identification strategy, and exploit countries’ exogenous geographic characteristics to estimate the causal effect of trade on income and inequality. Our cross-country estimates for trade’s impact on real income are consistently positive and significant over time.

And here’s the best chart from the study.

It shows that pro-trade nations are both more rich (solid green line) and more equal (dashed green line).

The other study is from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Here are the key findings.

We use four very different methods to estimate past gains. Each of these methods entails its own set of assumptions. Estimated annual gains are on the order of $1 trillion. The estimated gain in 2003 income is in the range of $2,800 to $5,000 additional income for the average person and between $7,100 and $12,900 for the average household. Future gains are harder to quantify, not surprisingly since the future is always difficult to predict. The estimates range from $450 billion to $1.3 trillion.

And my favorite visual from the study shows the negative impact of 1930s-style trade taxes.

Like this:

Washington is a place that gets infatuated with trendy ideas. A few years ago, everyone was talking about a “universal basic income” because of the strange assumption that millions of people will be unemployable in the future.

That idea was mostly embraced by folks on the left (though not Joe Biden), but there’s now a related idea on the right to provide “wage subsidies” so that unemployable (or difficult to employ) people can get work.

Work has enormous social value for the individuals who engage in it and for the formation and stability of their families, the opportunities of their children, and the vibrancy of their communities. Ideally, the labor market would settle in a place where productive, family-supporting work was available to all people in all places. But nothing in the theory of economics guarantees such an outcome… If we really want to “pay for jobs” — and we should — then we should do it directly. …a…“Federal Work Bonus,”…an additional $3 into your check for every hour worked? That would be a wage subsidy. …a wage subsidy aims to produce that effect in the labor market. Workers unwilling to sell their labor for less than $12 per hour may be worth only $9 per hour to an employer. No job will emerge in that scenario. With the insertion of a $3-per-hour wage subsidy, by contrast, the employer can pay the $9 per hour that the work is worth and the worker can receive the $12 per hour that he demanded. Thus will appear a job where none existed before. …The value of the subsidy would be set relative to a “target wage” of, say, $15 per hour and would close half the gap between the market wage and the target. A worker would initially receive a subsidy of $3 per hour in this case, equal to approximately $6,000 per year if he worked full-time.

The wage subsidy Cass advocates is similar to the “earned income tax credit,” which is basically a redistribution program that is administered through the tax code.

But Cass wants the EITC to be universally available rather than primarily targeted at households with children.

The federal earned income-tax credit (EITC) already operates something like a wage subsidy, offering low-income households large tax refunds that can exceed what they paid in taxes to begin with. But the EITC gets paid long after the income is earned — at tax time the following year — based on an opaque formula. It creates none of a wage subsidy’s immediate, transparent effect in the labor market. …The EITC also skews its benefits heavily toward households with children. A single person working full-time at minimum wage would get a credit of $41, less than 1 percent of what his colleague with kids can expect.

For what it’s worth, Cass acknowledges that employers might capture some of the benefits of a wage subsidy.

If the government offers a $3 subsidy atop a $9-per-hour job, the result will not necessarily be a $12-per-hour job. The employer might instead cut the market wage to $8, to which the government would add $3.50 — half the $7 gap to the target wage of $15 — leaving the worker with $11.50. …How workers and employers respond to the subsidy will vary based on labor-market conditions. What we do know from studies of the EITC and a similar program in the United Kingdom is that, in those instances, roughly 75 percent of the financial benefit accrued to workers.

Now let’s discuss the policy implications.

Cass openly admits that a wage subsidy is a form of redistribution, and – much to my dismay – he doesn’t object if at least some of that new spending is financed by higher taxes.

Subsidizing wages is a particularly well-tailored response to the challenges that globalization presents for American workers. First, the wage subsidy is the appropriate mechanism for redistributing gains from the economy’s “winners” to its “losers.” It comes closest to doing this directly, by taking tax revenue drawn from higher earners and inserting it directly into the paychecks of lower earners. …it is redistribution. And yes, high-income taxpayers will finance it. …The roughly $200 billion price tag for a wage subsidy might require some new tax revenue, but its funding could come largely from the existing safety net, which already dedicates more than $1 trillion annually to low-income households — including many with workers.

The following excerpt also rubbed me the wrong way since he seems to be saying that it would be better if Washington had expanded redistribution instead of lowering the corporate tax rate.

…in debates over the 2017 tax-reform package, which ultimately increased the ten-year federal deficit by $1.5 trillion for the sake of reducing the corporate tax rate, while failing to deliver even the small EITC increase for childless workers that Ryan had once championed. Indeed, while the Khanna proposal in its 2017 form is not a serious one, even it could have been implemented more cheaply than the tax reform that ultimately passed. The deficit spending would have been equally costly, but at least the labor market and its low-wage workers would have been the chief beneficiaries. …the Republican party’s relative disinterest in the labor market is made apparent by its preference for a tax cut over a wage subsidy.

This is very troubling. In the long run, faster growth is much better for low-income workers.

I’m not the only skeptic of this plan.

Writing for the Week, AEI’s Jame Pethokoukis argues that Cass bases his idea on a misreading of the economy.

One of his innovative analytical insights is that economic growth from globalization is bad for workers. …This is a terrible reading of history… America would be worse off today if it had somehow kept the closed “golden age” economy of the 1950s and 1960s. Its lack of openness greatly harmed American workers… Too much of American industry became complacent, unproductive… Likewise, would America have a more thriving economy today without Silicon Valley? …Cass’ reading of the data isn’t much better as he adopts the stance of many leftists that most Americans are no better off than decades ago. Yet a recent Congressional Budget Office study shows a nearly 50 percent increase in middle-class incomes since 1970, with incomes for the bottom fifth up some 80 percent.

And Michael Strain, also with the American Enterprise Institute, was similarly critical in a column for Bloomberg.

Economic growth is under attack. Or, more specifically, the idea that public policy should place a large amount of emphasis on the economy’s rate of growth is under assault… Traditionally, conservatives have placed a premium on growth as the best way to advance the fortunes of all Americans. But in recent years, some on the right have [been] playing down the importance of growth to the well-being of many working-class Americans. The latest argument for that position comes from Oren Cass… Cass argues that the results from decades of policies designed to encourage GDP growth are “embarrassing” and have “steered the nation off course.” …conservatives have been right in their traditional focus on growth. Let’s recall why. …the hot U.S. economy is the best jobs program available for lower-wage and vulnerable workers. …this strength is benefiting low-wage workers more than other groups. …Growth doesn’t just help low-income and working-class households in the short term. Over longer periods, seemingly small changes in the growth rate have large consequences. In the past four decades, for example, real GDP per person has increased from about $28,000 to over $55,000, growing at about 1.7 percent per year. If growth instead had been 1 percent, average GDP per head would be about three-quarters what it is today.

Needless to say, I strongly agree with Strain’s final point about the importance of faster growth.

Though I confess to being at a disadvantage when judging these anti-Cass columns since I haven’t read the book.

However, to the degree that Cass truly has given up on growth (i.e., accepting some form of the “secular stagnation” hypothesis), then I side with Pethokoukis and Strain.

But that’s not my main concern. Here are the four reasons that motivate my objection to wage subsidies.

Redistribution should not be a responsibility of the federal government. Indeed, I want all redistribution devolved to state and local governments (or to the private sector).

Cass says the program will cost $200 billion. Like with most government programs, I assume the actual fiscal burden will wind up being much higher. Especially after the left starts a bidding war.

Existing wages subsidies are riddled with fraud because the government effectively gives people lots of money simply for filing a tax return, yet rarely bothers to confirm they actually earned the income.

Here’s a visual from an excellent video tutorial by Professor Alex Tabarrok. It shows that government grabs a share of private output when a tax is imposed, thus reducing the benefits to buyers (“consumer surplus”) and sellers (“producer surplus).

But it also shows that some economic activity never takes place (“deadweight loss”).

When discussing the economics of taxation, I always try to remind people that deadweight loss also represents foregone taxable activity, which is why the Laffer Curve is a very real thing (as even Paul Krugman admits).

To see these principles at work in the real world, let’s look at a report from the Washington Post. The story deals with cigarette taxation, but I’m not sharing this out of any sympathy for smokers. Instead, the goal is to understand and appreciate the broader point of how changes in tax policy can cause changes in behavior.

The sign on the window of a BP gas station in Southeast Washington advertises a pack of Newports for $10.75. Few customers were willing to pay that much. But several men in the gas station’s parking lot had better luck illegally hawking single cigarettes for 75 cents. The drop in legal sales and spike in black market “loosies” are the result of $2-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes that took effect last month… Anti-tobacco advocates hailed the higher legal age and the tax increase as ways to discourage smoking. But retailers say the city has instead encouraged the black market and sent customers outside the city.

Shoukat Choudhry, the owner of the BP and four other gas stations in the city, says he does not see whom the higher taxes are helping. His customers can drive less than a mile to buy cheaper cigarettes in Maryland. He says the men in his parking lot are selling to teenagers. And the city is not getting as much tax revenue from his shops. Cigarette revenue at the BP store alone fell from $63,000 in September to $45,000 in October, when the tax increase took effect on the first of the month. …The amateur sellers say the higher cigarette tax has not been a bonanza for them. They upped their price a quarter for a single cigarette.

It’s also quite likely that the Laffer Curve will wreak havoc with the plans of the D.C. government.

Citywide figures for cigarette sales in October — as measured by tax revenue — will not be available until next month, city officials said. The District projected higher cigarette taxes would bring in $12 million over the next four years. Proceeds from the tax revenue are funding maternal and early childhood care programs. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids says the fear of declining tax revenue because of black market sales has not materialized elsewhere.

Actually, there is plenty of evidence – both in America and elsewhere – that higher cigarette taxes backfire.

I would be shocked if D.C. doesn’t create new evidence since avoidance is so easy.

…critics of the tax increase say the District is unique because of how easy it is to travel to neighboring Virginia, which has a 30-cent tax, and Maryland, with a $2 tax. “What person in their right mind is going to pay $9 or $10 for a pack of cigarettes when they can go to Virginia?” said Kirk McCauley of the WMDA Service Station and Automotive Repair Association, a regional association for gas stations. …Ronald Jackson, who declined to buy a loose cigarette from the BP parking lot, says he saves money with a quick drive to Maryland to buy five cartons of Newport 100s, the legal limit. “After they increased the price, I just go over the border,” said Jackson, a 56-year-old Southeast D.C. resident. “They are much cheaper.”

An under-appreciated aspect of this tax is how it encourages the underground economy.

Though I’m happy to see (especially remembering what happened to Eric Garner) that D.C. police have no interest in hindering black market sales.

The D.C. Council originally set aside money from the cigarette tax increase for two police officers to crack down on illegal sales outside of stores. But that funding was removed amid concerns about excessive enforcement and that it would strain police relations with the community. On a Tuesday morning, Choudhry, the owner of the Southeast BP, stopped a police officer who was filling up his motorcycle at the BP station to point out a group of men selling cigarettes in his parking lot. The officer drove off without action. …On a good day, he can pull about $70 in profit. “Would you rather that we rob or steal,” said Mike, who said he has spent 15 years in jail. “Or do you want us out here selling things?”

Kudos to Mike. I’m glad he’s engaging in voluntary exchange rather than robbing and stealing. Though maybe he got in trouble with the law in the first place because of voluntary exchange (a all-too-common problem for people in Washington).

But now let’s zoom out and return to our discussion about economics and taxation.

An under-appreciated point to consider is that deadweight loss grows geometrically larger as tax rates go up. In other words, you don’t just double damage when you double tax rates. The consequences are far more severe.

Here are two charts that were created for a chapter I co-authored in a book about demographics and capital taxation. This first chart shows how a $1 tax leads to 25-cents of deadweight loss.

But if the tax doubles to $2, the deadweight loss doesn’t just double.

In this hypothetical example, it rises to $1 from 25-cents.

For any given tax on any particular economic activity, the amount of deadweight loss will depend on both supply and demand sensitivities. Some taxes impose high costs. Others impose low costs.

But in all cases, the deadweight loss increases disproportionately fast as the tax rate is increased. And that has big implications for whether there should high tax rates on personal income and corporate income, as well as whether there should be heavy death taxes and harsh tax rates on capital gains, interest, and dividends.

Some of my left-wing friends shrug their shoulders because they assume that rich people bear the burden. But remember that the reduction of “consumer surplus” is a measure of the loss to taxpayers. The deadweight loss is the foregone output to society.

Membership already involves onerous regulations, and remaining a member of the EU would mean – sooner or later – sending ever-larger amounts of money to Brussels, where it then would be used to prop up Europe’s failing welfare states.

Getting out may involve some short-term pain, but it will avert far greater pain in the future.

At least that was the theory.

The reality is that the Tory-led government in London has made a mess of the negotiations. The newly announced deal isn’t a real Brexit.

Writing for the Telegraph, Dan Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament, sums up why the deal is a joke.

The deal, as one Italian newspaper puts it, represents “a resounding victory for the EU over Her Majesty’s subjects”. Yet there was nothing inevitable about this climbdown. On the contrary, there is something extraordinary, awe-inspiring even, about the slow-witted cowardice that led British negotiators to this point. …there is something extraordinary, awe-inspiring even, about the slow-witted cowardice that led British negotiators to this point. …the disastrous acceptance of the EU’s sequencing, which meant that all British leverage, including the exaggerated financial contributions, would be tossed away before the EU even began to discuss trade. …Can you blame Eurocrats for gloating? They sensed right at the start that they were dealing with a defeated and dispirited British team, whose only objective was to come back with something – anything – that could be described as a technical fulfilment of the referendum mandate. …we have ended up with the sort of deal that a defeated nation signs under duress. Britain will be subject to all the costs and obligations of EU membership with no vote, no voice and no veto.

But it gets worse.

Unbelievably, Britain has given the EU a veto over whether it can leave these arrangements: unlike EU membership itself, we have no right to walk away. Brussels will run our trade policy, our economy, even elements of our taxation for as long as it likes. As the usually Euro-fanatical Bloomberg asked incredulously last week, “Once Britain has acceded to this, what reason is there for the EU to agree to any other kind of deal?” …Leavers never did “own” this process. From the start, it has been controlled by those who wished it wasn’t happening, and who defined success as salvaging as much as they could of the old dispensation.

That final sentence is key. Theresa May was not a Brexit supporter. She failed to play some very strong cards and she basically worked to come up with a fake Brexit.

It remains to be seen, though, whether Parliament will approve this humiliating package. The House of Commons will vote in about two weeks and here’s how the UK-based Timesdescribes the possible outcomes if the plan gets rejected.

Scenario 1: a second Commons vote The prime minister fails to secure Commons support for her withdrawal agreement… Her response is to…then bring…it back for a second vote…, as happened in America after Congress initially rejected its government’s bank rescue plan in 2008. …Scenario 2: change of prime minister May fails to get the deal through and either resigns, or faces a confidence vote among Tory MPs which, if she lost, would also see her step down. …The question for Tory MPs would then be whether to back the deal mainly negotiated under May… Scenario 3: a second referendum A defeat for May could result in a second referendum but only if she or her successor supported it. Tory policy is to oppose a second referendum. …Scenario 4: no-deal Brexit Tory Brexiteers in the cabinet and in the party would respond to a defeat for the May proposals by pushing for a no-deal Brexit, or a “managed” no-deal. …Scenario 5: the Norway option Though there is no parliamentary majority at present for the May deal, or for no deal, there could be for a closer relationship with the EU. This could take the form of…the EEA (European Economic Area), the so-called Norway option.

For what it’s worth, I fear “Scenario 1.” Members of the Conservative Party are like American Republicans. They occasionally spout the right rhetoric, but most of them are go-along-to-get-along hacks who happily will trade their votes for a back-room favor.

So I will be disappointed but not surprised if this deal is enacted. It’s even possible it will be approved on the first vote.

My preference is for “Scenario 4” leading to something akin to “Scenario 5.”

A report from the Adam Smith Institute offers a user-friendly description of this “Norway option.”

We cannot however be subordinate to a supranational institution… Nor should we make do with a semi-detached position inside the EU that also gives us semi-detached influence while still constraining the UK in the wider world. …we have to leave and reform the relationship in a characteristically British, outward-looking and open way. …The UK therefore requires something of a “soft” exit that maintains open trade but removes Britain from political union and from all that Britain has consistently struggled with – the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, the hollowing out and the outsourcing of democracy, the constraints on global trade deals.

And what does that look like?

…the most optimal way to exit would be to take up a position outside the EU but inside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’), which very likely means re-joining the European Free Trade Association (‘EFTA’). As Britain is already a contracting party to the EEA Agreement there would be no serious legal obstacle and it would mean no regulatory divergence or tariffs but it would mean retaining freedom of movement for EU/EEA nationals. …Such a deal would require agreement from the EU and EFTA but both would have strong reasons for allowing it…with the UK on board, EFTA would instantly become the fourth largest trade grouping in the world. …In short, EEA countries have a market-based relationship with the EU by having full single market access. They are free of the EU’s political union ambitions, and can class themselves as self-governing nation states. …The EEA position also opens up the ability to make trade agreements with third countries (something the UK cannot do now), would provide the UK with the freedom to set its own levels of VAT, and would allow the UK to step away from its joint liability of EU debts. That would be very attractive to Britain seeking a liberal soft exit.

Here’s a table showing the difference between EU membership and EEA membership.

Sounds like the outline of a acceptable deal, right?

Not so fast. The crowd in Brussels doesn’t want a good deal, even though it would be positive for the economic well-being of EU member nations. They have an ideological desire to turn the European Union into a technocratic superstate and they deeply resent the British for choosing self-government and democracy.

As such, the goal is to either maneuver the British government into a humiliating surrender (Theresa May was happy to oblige) or to force a hard Brexit, which would probably cause some short-term economic disruption.

But there was also resistance on the British end to this option since it ostensibly (but perhaps not necessarily) requires free movement of people. In other words, it might mean unchecked migration from EU/EEA nations, which arouses some nativist concerns.

Since I mentioned that a hard Brexit could lead to potential short-term economic disruption, this is a good opportunity to cite a very key section of Mark Littlewood’s recent column in the UK-based Times.

The Treasury has suggested that GDP could fall by as much as 7.7 per cent if Britain exited the EU without a deal. However, is there any reason to treat this projection any more seriously than the Treasury’s view that the Leave vote itself would lead to a recession and a reduction in GDP by between 3 per cent and 6 per cent? Almost all official predictions relating to the economic impact of the Brexit vote have been shown to be enormously over-pessimistic. Why should one assume that present forecasts are not beset by the same flaws?

Amen. The anti-Brexit crowd (the “remainers”) tried to win by arguing that a vote for Brexit would cause an economic collapse. That “Project Fear” was exposed as a joke (and was the target of some clever humor).

And the new version of Project Fear is similarly dishonest.

In a column for CapX, Julian Jessop of the Institute of Economic Affairs has additional details.

The public is being bombarded with warnings of potentially devastating impacts on the economy, their security and their welfare if the UK becomes a “third country” at 11pm on 29th March 2019, without the Withdrawal Agreement and framework for a future relationship anticipated in Article 50. …the daftest headline…is that a “no-deal” Brexit means that the UK would run out of food by August 2019 (the 7th, to be precise). This relies on the bizarre assumption that the UK would no longer be able to import food, not just from the EU but from anywhere in the world, and that we would continue to export food even as our own people starve. …it is often assumed that the EU would ignore its other legal obligations, including WTO rules. …the EU would not be able to treat the UK any less favourably than other WTO members.. Relying on the courts to fix things is also ra.rely a good idea. But it is absolutely right that the EU can’t go out of its way to make life difficult for the UK either.

Anyhow, this column is already too long, but here are links to four other CapX columns for interested parties.

I especially like the last column. One of the behind-the-scenes aspects of the Brexit debate is that the eurocrats in Brussels are scared that the UK will become more market-oriented once it has escaped the EU’s regulatory clutches.

And just as the EU has gone after Ireland and Switzerland for supposedly insufficient taxation, it also now is trying to hamstring the United Kingdom. All the more reason to escape and become the Singapore of Europe.

P.S. Donald Trump could help the United Kingdom by negotiating a quick and clean free-trade agreement. Sadly, that violates his protectionist instincts.

Now the economy seems to be doing a bit better, which is leading my friends on the left to make two impossible-to-reconcile claims.

It is doing better, but Obama deserves credit.

The economy isn’t doing better.

I’ve previously explained that the first argument doesn’t hold water. Today, let’s address the second argument.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former CEO Andy Puzder claims that Trump easily wins over Obama when you look at the numbers.

For eight years under President Obama, the growing burden of government suppressed the economic recovery that should have followed the recession of 2008-09. Mr. Obama nonetheless has claimed responsibility for today’s boom, asking Americans in September to “remember when this recovery started.” Yet it wasn’t until President Trump took office that the economy surged. …The result is a rising tide that is lifting boats across every class and region of the country. …Today unemployment rests at 3.7%, near a 50-year low. Since the government began reporting the data, unemployment has never been as low as it is today for African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and people with only a high-school education.

It’s certainly good news that unemployment rates have dropped. But labor-force participation numbers still haven’t fully recovered, or even come close to fully recovering, so the data on jobs is not quite as impressive as it sounds.

That being said, Puzder has a compelling indictment of Obama’s performance.

During a typical recovery, the economy grows at a rate between 3% and 4%, and the Obama administration predicted such a surge in its 2010 midsession review. It never came. The “recovery” of those years often felt much like a recession.

Amen. This echoes my criticism of Obamanomics. He made the U.S. a bit more like Europe, so it’s no surprise that growth was weak.

Let’s now look at Puzder’s evidence that Trump has done a better job. He compares the end of the Obama economy with the beginning of the Trump economy.

GDP growth staggered along at 1.5% in Mr. Obama’s final six full quarters in office. …growth doubled to 3% during Mr. Trump’s first six full quarters. …the increase in job openings over Mr. Trump’s first 21 months has averaged an impressive 75,000 a month. Over Mr. Obama’s last 21 months in office, the number of job openings increased an average of 900 a month. …During Mr. Obama’s last 21 months, the number of employed Americans increased an average of 157,000 a month. Under Mr. Trump, the increase has accelerated to 214,000 a month, a 36% improvement. …In Mr. Obama’s final 21 months, weekly earnings rose an average of $1.31 a month. Under Mr. Trump, weekly earnings have increased an average of $1.84 cents a month: a 40% improvement that’s come mostly since tax reform took effect in January. Over that period, weekly earnings have grown an average of $2.31 a month, a 76% increase over Mr. Obama’s last 21 months. …The unemployment rate declined 13% during Mr. Obama’s last 21 months, but from there it has dropped another 23% during Mr. Trump’s tenure.

All of this data is compelling, but I caution my GOP/Trump friends about relying on short-run economic data to make their case.

For instance, what if the economy is in a false boom caused by easy money? If that leads to a recession, will they want Trump to take the blame?

Or let’s consider a more tangible example. Trump and his supporters used to make a big deal out of rising stock prices, but that argument no longer appears to be very persuasive.

Let’s close with two charts that take different sides. The first one is from MSNBC, which makes a persuasive case that reductions in unemployment under Trump are simply a continuation of the trend.

On the other hand, this second chart, which comes from the White House, shows that economic outcomes are better than what the Obama Administration predicted.

This also is compelling data, and I’ve explained that even small improvements in economic performance are very desirable.

Though it remains to be seen whether this additional growth is either real or sustainable.

The bottom line is that there’s no reason to expect big economic improvements under Trump, at least in the long run. His good policies on taxes and regulation are offset by bad policies on spending and trade.

But all these instances of intentional and unintentional bias are trivial compared to our next example.

The New York Times has gone above and beyond conventional media bias with a video entitled, “How Capitalism Ruined China’s Health Care System.”

Here’s the part that caused my jaw to drop.

After the sad opening story about the guy with the sick mother, there’s a section from 1:33-2:27 that makes two observations that basically show the premise of the video is totally wrong.

First, it points out (from 1:33-1:42) that there is a universal, government-run health system that ostensibly covers the guy’s mother, so her unfortunate status is yet another example that coverage in a government-run healthcare system is not the same as treatment.

Second, it points out (from 2:05-2:27) that life expectancy soared once the communist party relaxed its grip on the economy and allowed some liberalization, which would seem to be powerful evidence that capitalism leads to better health outcomes.

These are astounding mistakes.

But it gets worse. Sarah Lilly, who lives in China, debunked the rest of the video in a column for FEE.

The New York Times…attempts to blame capitalism for the many problems in China’s health care system. …As a resident of China and a recipient of outstanding private health care here, I was confused as to why the Times would show us the horrors of a capitalist system without actually visiting a private health care facility. …All of the horrors depicted in the high-quality video—the long lines, the scalping, and the hospital fights—occurred at government-run health care facilities. …At the very least, failing to feature a single private medical facility while blaming capitalism for the dysfunction of China’s public health system is intellectually dishonest.

She points out that the big-picture analysis in the video is wrong.

In the video, the Times praises Chairman Mao’s introduction of “free” health care and claims that when capitalism was introduced into the country, the state retreated and care was no longer free. Neither statement is true. First, health care was never free; it was paid for by tax revenues. Second, the state never retreated; rather, its regulatory apparatus became vaster and even more invasive. Out of sheer necessity, China allowed for the creation of private hospitals to ease the burden of the country’s heavily bureaucratic and deteriorating health care system.

And she also explains that the details of the video are wrong.

The Times video depicts the ungodly long line most Chinese face to see a physician. …It’s an appalling scene. …There’s just one problem. The Shanghai Cancer Center is a public hospital, not a private one. The long lines, scalpers, bribes, and physical fights with hospital staff—all of these exclusively happen in the public, communist, government-run hospitals. …In an egregious bit of sleight-of-hand, the Grey Lady asserts that capitalism is ruining Chinese health care while presenting us with a hospital where capitalism is not practiced.

But I sometimes come across an incident that challenges these principles.

Let’s look at a horrible story from Michigan about girls being genitally mutilated.

Dr. Jumana Nagarwala was arrested in April 2017 and accused of leading a criminal conspiracy that involved multiple doctors and resulted in the mutilation of nine girls over the course of twelve years. The practice, which is universally recognized as a gross violation of human rights, is traditional among the Dawoodi Bohra, the Muslim sect to which Nagarwala and his co-conspirators belong.

My visceral instinct is for some tit-for-tat justice. The so-called doctors should receive equivalent treatment, without the benefit of anesthesia.

Since that’s not an option, a very lengthy prison sentence could be the next-best alternative.

But something very unusual happened. The barbaric doctors had been charged by the federal government based on a federal law against genital mutilation, and a judge decided that the statute exceeded the proper powers of the federal government.

A federal judge dismissed charges Tuesday against several Michigan doctors accused of mutilating the genitals of numerous underage girls, ruling that the federal prohibition against the practice is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman argued that the 22-year-old federal law prohibiting female genital mutilation (FGM), which went unused until last year, constitutes federal overreach. …the judge’s ruling entirely clears four defendants in the case, including three mothers who allegedly handed their underage daughters over to Nagarwala to be mutilated.

This is a quandary.

I want the “doctors” to be thrown under the jail, yet part of me is very happy that a federal judge actually acknowledges that the Constitution imposes some limits on federal power.

Too bad Judge Friedman wasn’t sitting in for Justice John Roberts when the Obamacare case was (wrongly) decided.

Anyhow, here’s what has since happened.

In response to the case, Michigan governor Rick Snyder signed new laws prohibiting the practice of FGM, but as those laws applied only to future violations, the defendants in this case were charged under the old federal statute. Twenty-three other states, however, do not have laws banning the practice, leading critics of the judge’s ruling to suggest that parents intent on mutilating their daughters for religious purposes will simply travel to states where they can do so legally.

I have a couple of concluding thoughts.

First, I imagine that all 50 states – even crazy California – will pass laws against this barbaric ritual. So there’s no reason to relax my strong support for federalism.

Second, I hope Michigan authorities figure out how to charge the so-called doctors under existing state laws against assault, kidnapping, and anything else that might work.

In conclusion, I’m not under the illusion that any system will deliver perfect justice. But I do think we would get the best-possible outcomes if we adhered to constitutional principles and restricted the size and scope of the federal government.